The Trigger is something that happens whether a light is turned on, or a variable changes. The Condition is evaluated after the trigger occurs. If the trigger never occurs your Condition will never be checked.

The two options actually express two different things: option 1 is a threshold crossing (goes from less than 59 to greater than 59), option 2 is any change that occurs when the resulting value is above 59.

these values all come from xml files - handled via ghost xml (see attached image 1 for example of whats available). Basically for those, the values that I use are contained within an item like "ichem" and that returns a comma separated list of values (0,,15,1540,0,0) that I am then parsing out to the individual variables.

To be honest, I never thought of that... the 4th ghost xml file (status) actual has defined values and states that I can use and "solar temp" is one of them. That would probably solve my problem if I just used it directly.

If I do that though, i lose the options to trigger via a threshold as Jay pointed out, and I end up with option 2 - triggering multiple times once the target is hit.

The two options actually express two different things: option 1 is a threshold crossing (goes from less than 59 to greater than 59), option 2 is any change that occurs when the resulting value is above 59.

If I do that though, i lose the options to trigger via a threshold as Jay pointed out, and I end up with option 2 - triggering multiple times once the target is hit.

The two options actually express two different things: option 1 is a threshold crossing (goes from less than 59 to greater than 59), option 2 is any change that occurs when the resulting value is above 59.

See 2nd screenshot

The type of the state in the device is set to string - which is why you don't see mathematical operations on it. So, in this case, yes, you'd need to stuff it into a variable and let the server coerce it to a number. There isn't a way to change a variable value that bypasses the trigger (as far as I know) so I'm not sure how the value is changing but the trigger isn't firing.